You’ve adopted your beloved Everton Football Club and deluded yourself you can do what the combined expertise of David Moyes and Roberto Martínez (and now Ronald Koeman, and NOW Sam Allardyce) could not by taking them to either domestic or European glory.
THE CATCH: Everton are incredibly mediocre, Phil Neville is still your captain, and under the current regime you have a transfer budget of £0.00. Get sharpening your knife, you’re about to enter a gunfight…
Previously: FM11/12 Skipping to the Good Bit at EFC (Intro), FM11/12: June 2011 (Pre-Season), FM11/12: July 2011 (Pre-Season) Part 1, FM11/12: July 2011 (Pre-Season) Part 2, FM11/12: August 2011, FM11/12: September 2011, FM11/12: October 2011, FM11/12: November 2011, FM11/12: December 2011 Part 1, FM11/12: December 2011 Part 2, FM11/12: January 2012 Part 1, FM11/12: January 2012 Part 2
Stand by your beds. We’ve got United at home. There’s no time for pleasantries.
I gaze solemnly out the window – my cigar unceremoniously burning to a stub in the crystal ashtray on the windowsill. I catch sight of Heitinga and Coleman playing headers and volleys, whilst Leon Osman pisses about pretending to be pregnant with the ball under his shirt. This is clearly the height of comedy for Phil Jagielka who is *actually* rolling on the floor laughing. Meanwhile: Paolo Ferreira and Niki Jelavic are leaning against the posts of a training goal sulking and looking like they might shiv Steve Round if he tells them to “put a bib on”.
I wonder what Sir Alex Ferguson is doing right now? Bet his place at Carrington is a tight ship. You wouldn’t get Michael Carrick feigning childbirth with a Mitre Delta. Not on SAF’s watch. Must be nice. Tomorrow I’ll get my tracksuit on and whip the boys into shape – we’ll need them at full-strength and full match-sharpness.
United already have this league sewn up. They are miles better than everyone else; and both of their strikers, Rooney and Hernandez, make up the top two scorers in the league. They play four-four-fucking-two and they won’t change because they just do it better than you do.
They’re really, really, really good footballers playing in a really simple system that they understand perfectly.
By contrast, we’re mainly a bunch of mercenaries playing in an absurdly complex system designed to disguise a bunch of individual shortcomings. But then that’s the case for 90% of the league, and on the whole it’s worked quite well for us. I can’t be too upset with 6th place.
We’re keeping with the 5-3-2 flying wingback formation, with strict instructions to ‘get right up in their faces’. I believe it’s called ‘gegenpressing’ (by dickheads), and we’ll be doing it until we inevitably tire in the 60th minute, where we’ll put everyone on the goal line and hope we can keep the ball out by playing as an amorphous blob of bone and sinew.
All of this said, we’re in OK form – and able to field our strongest 11 for perhaps the first time in a competitive game. Maybe. Just maybe, we might shock them.
Everton 1 – 3 Manchester United
We didn’t. We had one shot on target and we scored from it.
This is probably my fault. playing wingbacks with no protection from wide forward players meant that they outnumbered us on the flanks and walked through us. Poor Johnny Heitinga, he’ll be haunted by dreams of Antonio Valencia taking the absolute piss out of him for years now.
We do manage to string a few nice passes together when we go forward – but when you’re up against a centre-half of Nemanja Vidic’s quality, you need to do better than that. Tim Cahill winds back the years with a nicely worked goal that gives us some brief hope – before Hernandez bursts the bubble in injury time. A comfortable win for comfortably the best team in the league. That’s that then.
My best XI just got completely bantered off by The Red Behemoth. As such, I’m gonna give some of them a rest. It’s been a gruelling Christmas/New Year’s period, and I’m pretty sure Sylvain Distin’s skeleton is only holding itself together as a result of necromancy.
Anyway. We’ve got guests from a little further up the M66; but way, way down the league for our next fixture. Blackburn have a half-decent squad but find themselves propping up the table under Steve Kean. Hoillet, Olsson, Hanley and N’Zonzi are all quality players but for whatever reason Kean hasn’t been able to get a tune out of them. N’Zonzi in particular looks like he might be a nice steal if the Lancashire side get relegated. I ask Steve Round to remind me about this before the game – so that I can make a point of saying “well played” and looking him dead in the eye after the game. The FA can’t investigate you for eye contact.
We’ve switched things up for this fixture. Given our opponents’ morale is abysmal, I’m risking playing a rotated side in the hope of squeezing out a result against an emotionally spent Blackburn side. Besides which: Coleman and Fellaini were the worst of a bad bunch against United, we’ll give them some time out.
Everton 1 – 0 Blackburn Rovers
Far from a vintage performance, but we got the win. I’m a little concerned that my preferred striking duo (who I’ve spent the entire season hyping up to whatever Guardian sports journo will listen), are yet to score in either of the league games they’ve played together. However, we control the game easily, limiting Blackburn to just three shots – all of which fly harmlessly wide of Yann Sommer’s goal.
We take the lead on five minutes courtesy of yet another textbook screamer from Darron Gibson and never look like losing.
Regardless of that win – getting hammered by United has left us adrift 5 points outside the top 6, albeit with a game in hand on ‘struggling’ Arsenal.
I’m also having trouble with this formation. I love Coleman and Baines. I only pray that I have twins one day so that I may have two first-born to share their names. However, as wing-backs with no cover – they’re perpetually fucking knackered. With this in mind, I put a meeting in the Google calendar for all the coaching staff so we can talk about switching up the formation.
I fancy a lie-in, so I change the meeting time before bed. When they’re all standing around confused at 10am, I swan into the office (calendar pre-loaded) to let them know that they’re actually in the wrong – and that, more importantly, I’m their boss.
We then set about tweaking our style of play. This formation has served us well but we’re getting overwhelmed in wide areas by teams that play simple formations. As a ‘progressive’ manager I cannot allow this to happen.
Besides which. We have a home game against a West Brom side that list Peter Odemwingie as their most potent attacking threat. If ever there was a time to experiment – it’s now.
After some heated debate (I chucked Steve Round’s headset out the window), We’ve gone with a four-five one with Kadlec operating off the left hand-side – in the hope he’ll be able to cut in and nick a few on the back post. Leon Osman is the only player who can play on the right with any degree of competence, so he’ll be operating as little other than someone who can play one-twos with Coleman as he surges upfield. This will free up his little Irish legs of some of the defensive burden he’s carried of late. Jack Rodwell will hold the fort and generally patrol about pretending to be harder than he is, while Bressan knits everything together and Darron Gibson shoots whenever he gets the ball.
Sound. Let’s batter these and prove I’m a tactical genius.
West Bromwich Albion 2 – 1 Everton
If it ain’t broke…
It all started so perfectly. We won an attritional midfield battle which saw Gibson release Kadlec in acres of space, who wormed his way into the middle to square the ball for Jelavic who scores, naturally, with a first-time shot.
Then, it’s as if we’ve triggered some kind of power-up in this West-Brom side. They run us completely ragged – tearing past a shell-shocked Leon Osman and Seamus Coleman repeatedly down the right hand side.
First Shane Long…
And then Peter Odemwingie.
I lambast the players in the dressing room, but it does nothing to galvanise them. They’re passengers all game and we’re lucky we weren’t completely embarrassed by Graham fucking Dorrans and co.
Still, we’ve learnt a lesson here. Don’t ever do anything differently ever. On the whole they’re a simple lot these lads – overloading them with too much new info too quickly seems to make their head explode.
I get the coaches to make sure Baines and Coleman are doing nothing but cardio training from now on. I need them operating like Mo Farah if they’re ever going to survive the rest of the season…
SEANFITZPADDY 